The hook
A white Sufi dervish house built right against the foot of a cliff, where a river bursts full-grown out of a cave in the rock beside it.
01Why it's worth it
A short drive from Mostar, the Buna river doesn't trickle into being; it erupts, already a full river, from a cave at the base of a tall limestone cliff, one of the strongest karst springs in Europe. Tucked against the rock beside that spring is the Blagaj Tekija, a tekke or dervish lodge some five centuries old, a modest white building with an Ottoman-Mediterranean grace that seems to grow out of the stone. You can sit on a terrace over the emerald water where it pours from the cave, tour the simple interior, and feel why Sufis chose this exact spot. It is small and can get busy with tour groups, but the setting, cliff, cave, river, and lodge in one composition, is genuinely striking. A ruined fortress on the hill above completes the picture.
02How to experience it
Come early or late to have the riverside terrace calm, and go inside the tekke as well as viewing it from across the water. Combine it with Mostar and the nearby Kravice waterfalls for a Herzegovina day.